Correct. Trump is really good at “driving a media agenda.” He takes bold, beyond-the-Overton-window positions; he gets combative in interviews, he insults critics, he insists solutions are simple and that only a conspiracy of the malevolent and foolish stands in the way of enacting them.
.. I used to joke that Bill Clinton was the only guy who could distract attention from a fundraising scandal by getting into a sex scandal.
.. Trump figured out how to overload the system, generating so many headline-grabbing surprises, controversies and personnel changes that few if any really had the time to leave a lasting impression.
.. just during a couple months in the campaign, we saw Trump contending that a federal judge couldn’t rule fairly because “he’s a Mexican;” mock Carly Fiorina’s face; get into a war of words with a slain soldier’s father. Any one of those would have defined and politically destroyed a lesser-known figure.
.. Think about how Obama and the Democrats spent almost all of 2009 and a chunk of 2010 focused on what became Obamacare. But the amount of consistent focus — and presidential persuasion — needed to pass a legislative agenda is completely different from the amount needed to dominate a news cycle.
Every time it seems the president has zeroed in on an issue, and appears determined to see it through — guns and immigration are just the two latest examples — he moves on to something else. And Congress, which isn’t designed to respond swiftly to national events and the wishes of the White House even in the least distracted of circumstances, simply can’t keep up.
The constant whiplash of priorities is getting on lawmakers’ nerves.
“It’s unbelievable to me,” said Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine). “The attention span just seems to be. . . it’s a real problem.”
Jamie Horowitz fired as head of Fox Sports amid reports of sexual harassment
21st Century Fox launched an investigation last week into allegations of sexual harassment, and that several women at Fox Sports have been interviewed.
.. Jamie was hired by Fox to do a job, a job that until today he has performed in an exemplary fashion. Any slanderous accusations to the contrary will be vigorously defended.”
.. “We sincerely regret and apologize for the fact that Gretchen was not treated with the respect and dignity that she and all of our colleagues deserve,” Fox said in a statement at the time.
.. Since arriving at Fox Sports in 2015, he lured controversial commentators such as
- Skip Bayless,
- Jason Whitlock and
- Colin Cowherd,
heavily promoting them across all platforms.
.. Horowitz had been a rising star at ESPN, steering programming away from news and highlights and focusing more on debate and personalities.
.. Shortly after taking the FS1 reins, he told The Washington Post he wanted programming that was “
- provocative,
- independent,
- original,
- fearless,
- blunt.”
About Roger Stone: (his own site)
In 1978, Stone co-founded the National Conservative Political Action Committee (NCPAC) where he is credited with developing the negative campaign into an art form and pioneering the modern use of negative campaign advertising which Mr. Stone calls “comparative, educational, not negative.”
.. Stone became known for his expertise and strategies for motivating and winning ethnic and Catholic voters.
.. In 2000 Stone is credited with the hard-ball tactics which resulted in closing down the Miami-Dade Presidential recount.
.. The New York Times and Miami Herald reported it was Mr. Stone who first tipped of the FBI to Governor Eliot Spitzer’s use of prostitutes.
.. Stone has worked for pro-American political parties in Eastern Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean. He is consulted regularly on communications and corporate and public relations strategy by fortune 500 ECO’s and pro-democracy foreign leaders.
.. “Professional lord of mischief” – Weekly Standard
“Legendary conservative political hit man” – TheHill.com
..
“He [Roger] is one of its fiercest warriors, with the battle scars to prove it.” – The Weekly Standard
“A dragon slayer who helped bring down New York State’s most powerful man” – NY Daily News
“A long history of bare-knuckle politics” – The New York Times
“The GOP’s dapper Pugilist” – The Washington Post
“Seasoned practitioner of hard-edged politics” – The New York Times
“Master Political Strategist and Street fighter” – LeftVoice.com
“The most dangerous person in America today…” – The Village Voice
“Still, Stone gets results” – FirstPost.com, UK
“Skilled in the dark arts of politics” – The Atlantic
.. “Notorious” – Vanity Fair
.. “Master of right-wing political hit jobs… – Politico.com
“Controversial” – The Washington Post
“Infamous” – Gothamist.com
“The dapper don of dirty deeds” – DullardMush.com
“Directly involved in the downfall of Clinton campaign chief strategist Mark Penn” – RADAR
.. “Known for hard-ball politics and a cloak and dagger sensibility” – The New York Times
“At times, Stone’s real party seems to be the vaudevillian rather than the GOP” – New Yorker Magazine
.. “Respected, hated, and always controversial Republican political knife fighter…” – NoQuarterUSA.net
.. “An equal-opportunity trickster” – NY Daily News
“The undisputed master of the black arts of electioneering” – Scotsman.com
A 140-Character Flaw
It’s hard for a new administration to avoid controversy, but must Trump create it out of thin air?
.. What makes the furor over President Trump’s wiretapping claims so remarkable is how unnecessary it is. The flap didn’t arise from events outside of the administration’s control, nor was it a clever trap sprung by its adversaries. The president went out of his way to initiate it. He picked up his phone and tweeted allegations that he had no idea were true or not, either to distract from what he thought was a bad news cycle, or to vent, or both.
.. at the very least has diverted him and his team from much more important work on Capitol Hill, where his agenda will rise or fall. In an alternative and more conventional universe, the White House would be crowing over Judge Gorsuch’s testimony before Congress.
.. Since the wiretapping allegations, Spicer’s days have been spent in the semantics, air quotes, and epistemological gymnastics necessary to support Trump’s claims.
.. All he has to say is that he accepts his FBI director’s statement and that he doesn’t want to talk about it any more.
.. It’s hard to see why the Russians would have had to involve Trump associates in what should have been a simple two-step process: 1) hack Democratic accounts; 2) give the resulting information to WikiLeaks. But Comey’s acknowledgement of the investigation will stoke the darkest suspicions of the Left.